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Breitling Exospace B55 Connected Watch Review

I reviewed the Breitling Exospace B55 Connected today, about a year after first getting the Apple Watch, and more than a year after Breitling first unveiled its B55 smartwatch concept in 2015. The smartwatch industry is growing and evolving, albeit conservatively now The tech industry hasn't seen mainstream consumers adopt these devices as quickly as they think people should buy new TV or phone technology. Let's face it, it's going to be a while before smartwatches hit their stride, and until then, there's going to be endless experimentation with how smartwatches should look and how the technology continues to improve. To me, that means these are exciting times because I'm not covering a mature market or even a mature product. Instead, I'm starting to enjoy the history being made as we gradually move into the age of wearable technology, which will inevitably include a plethora of smart, connected devices worn on the wrist.

The Breitling Exospace B55 Connected is not a competitor to the Apple Watch or Android Wear, but offers its own way of illustrating how connected technology interacts with the tried and true concept of wearing a watch. In fact, you don't need to use the watch as a smartwatch at all. You can enjoy the Breitling Exospace B55 Connected as easily as a "disconnected" watch, and it has most of the same features as other quartz-based Breitling timepieces. In a way, this makes this very different from a device with a relatively short user lifespan. Actually, let me start my review with battery life.

In the owner's manual, Breitling includes a battery life graph with a series of averages. They don't even call it "battery life," they call it "autonomy," which is how long the watch can stay away from the charger. The watch charges via an included USB-based chord that attaches to the case via a small magnetic clip. It works great, but what I don't like about the system is that the cable easily disconnects from the case if you're on the go or charging in your bag.

With the screen at full "strength" (brightness) and with Bluetooth connectivity and notifications (beeps and vibrations), the internal lithium-ion battery can last an estimated 15 days between charges. That's not bad. You can drink more juice for a few days without notice. Lower the "Intensity" a bit and you'll get up to about 25 days of juice with notifications and connections turned on. However, if you close the connection and reduce the backlight intensity, you can get more than 50 days of power. I'd say these numbers aren't too bad compared to the rest of the industry.

The smartwatch theory behind the Breitling Exospace B55 Connected is pretty neat. Instead of using your watch as a second screen for your phone, use your phone app as a second screen for your watch. Best of all, you can choose to receive basic notifications on your watch for incoming calls, messages, or other notifications. These incoming notifications are easy to notice, but intentionally relatively basic.

The Breitling Exospace B55 Connected app connects to the watch via Bluetooth, allowing you to perform a range of actions on the watch from your phone. This is important because for a long time, it was a bit of a pain to use the various functions on these "Super Quartz" analog-digital Breitling watches. With two small LCD screens, a crown, and two buttons, navigating the user interface or adjusting all the settings isn't super easy. The app makes it easier to use your watch's features - including setting the time, changing calendar functions, setting alarms, setting various chronographs and timers, and more. If anything, apps make it easier for people to dig into what the watch does, but don't require you to keep going from watch to phone.

The idea is that after you've set up the watch before "mission" (it's a pilot-style watch after all), you can have all the information you need on your wrist and refer to the app to make changes or get more if needed information. Again, all the information can be found on the watch face itself, but the app just opens up new options to make things easier.

Going back to Mr. Kelly, he thinks this functionality will be greatly expanded in the future, allowing the watch to access various aircraft/ship/aircraft systems and operate as a controller as well as a kiosk connected to everything else. The fact remains that looking at your wrist for the necessary information you need to know on a regular basis has not been replaced by any other means. Because of this, demand and demand for high-quality smartwatches is still high, even though the industry is still in its infancy.

However, Breitling is not a baby making watches and has been doing so for over 100 years. The company itself is not a tech company, but in contrast to the vast majority of its Swiss colleagues, they continue to produce a large number of high-end electronic quartz watches in addition to mechanical watches. Most other such luxury watch brands do not manufacture quartz watches. Forays into technology and traditional watches give Breitling a unique perspective on emerging smartwatch technology that most rivals can't claim. It allows Breitling to use their skills and experience to understand how people and professionals use watches to help their new smartwatches more directly meet the needs of demanding customers. At least, the logic would be so.

The apps available for the watch work well, and given the constant software updates, it's hard to review them. I will simply say that the app looks beautiful and using it is more or less straight forward. It does most of the work you'd expect, and I love that you can adjust settings on the watch without fiddling with the watch's UI.

The basic functions of the Breitling Exospace B55 Connected are very similar to other Breitling quartz watches that started in aerospace. The watch contains a Swiss heat-compensated quartz (SuperQuartz) movement that is accurate to about 10 seconds per year, and of course it can be updated with the time from your phone. In addition to the two time zones (which you can easily switch between), the watch's main features include a range of chronographs (e.g. task-in-progress timer and chronograph for immediate use, etc.), countdown timer, alarm, and calendar . Of these features, I won't touch on the more specialized ones (mostly because I'm not a military pilot and don't have much demand for them).

The dial and case of the watch represent a small evolution of the Breitling Aerospace Evo, launched in 2013. Crafted from black PVD-coated titanium, the case is 46mm wide (15.25mm thick and water resistant to 100m), making it comfortable on the wrist despite its size. Surrounding the dial is a rotating chronograph bezel, and above the dial is an AR-coated sapphire crystal. Thicker casings may have the same dimensions due to new electronic modules and batteries. That being said, it's not out of place with many other modern Breitling watches. Breitling has done a great job with the dials, although the new generation of aviation hands don't appeal to me as much as the last - although I prefer them in blue.

You can choose to "park" the hands, which means they move away from the screen - but it's important to remember that to move them back you double-tap the crown. For the most part, using the watch is intuitive, but sometimes, you definitely need to refer to the instructions to understand (or remember) how certain features work.

Even if you're not a pilot who needs the extended functionality these quartz-based Breitling "professional" watches offer, the Breitling Exospace B55 Connected provides a solid foundation for everyday wear, and I love the fact that I don't need to recharge it often. I have to admit that while I don't use the smartphone app on the watch very often, I do like the simpler notifications the watch offers and find that it's possible to adjust the alarm on the app rather than the one on the watch in actual use more Become a game-changer when it comes to watch functionality. I'm very picky about UI, so for me it's not enough for a project to have functionality - it needs to have accessible functionality.

In addition to the original Breitling Exospace B55 Connected blue hands and matching blue and black "TwinPro" rubber strap, Breitling made a watch version with more conservative grey hands on a grey or black rubber strap. The strap does need to be cut to size, but the matching titanium folding deployant clasp enables fine-tuning on the fly, which is nice.

I really like the Breitling Exospace B55 Connected, although I recognize its "controversial nature", being very expensive for a typical smartwatch and "too connected" for a traditional Swiss luxury watch. It does a decent job of navigating both worlds and in many ways it really should be used by professionals to test and evaluate its capabilities, hopefully Breitling will continue to make more and more watches to achieve Scott Kelly of astronauts dream of wearing them on their wrists for years to come. This reference VB5510H2|BE45|235S|V20DSA.2 Breitling Exospace B55 Connected watch.